


Come Back One Day

by wabbajack



Category: Of Orcs and Men, Styx: Master of Shadows, Styx: Shards of Darkness
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 05:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3344642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wabbajack/pseuds/wabbajack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Styx may not know where he came from, not exactly, but he’s going home. (OOAM spoilers, profanity. Shadowgoblin path.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Back One Day

**Author's Note:**

> I found this thing I forgot I wrote, back before Master of Shadows was even announced. Reading it again now, having beaten MOS…I think I actually like it _more_ , and that’s all I’ll say. (Originally untitled; current title lifted from MOS.)

It's days and days before they stop, _really_ stop and not just a quick pause for water, a few minutes' sleep, maybe gathering some edibles and seeing whose wounds are catching the rot. This time there are cooking fires, scattered here and there like stars under the dim moon, bringing the somewhat more pleasing smells of a very welcome real dinner to night air that otherwise mostly just reeks of lots and lots of hard-traveling orcs. Not as many orcs, at least, as left the Wall to begin with; the former slaves have been splitting off, here and there, as they pass the paths that will lead them to their own proper tribe-lands again, and the call to war goes with them.

Still, it's a lot of orcs left, and Styx doesn't think anyone could blame him for wanting to breathe slightly less sweaty air while he's digesting. He slips away from the crowd of giants without much effort, padding into the night until he finds a little hillside above the river that looks like as good a place as any to park his ass. It isn't terribly far, but the fires and the giants eating and milling about and going down to the water look a little smaller, and the murmur of voices is a little more indistinct. With speech harder to make out, it's easier to not notice how many of the words might as well be spoken in Elvish for all they mean to him.

It's not like he's sorry for having had this little misadventure. Hell no, he isn't. But that doesn't mean he's not entitled to a little fresh air and open sky, either. All these orcs and their...orcishness...he belongs here and he doesn't, all at once, and the feeling sits oddly in his chest where the ghost of his old life passed into him.

Heavy footsteps in the grass, and the voice they carry up the hill with them isn't much of a surprise. "I'll assume you didn't come up here to watch the men bathe."

"Hey, don't judge me." Styx doubts his friend's eyes are keen enough in the dimness to see him grin, but somehow it doesn't really matter. The moment of shameless humor in the midst of an uneasy mood doesn't feel completely defensive or forced, for once, and that's all that does. Fuck, maybe he _has_ gone kinda sentimental. Oh well, no law says he has to tell anyone.

Arkaïl rumbles in his wide chest, vaguely derisive, as his towering bulk settles down nearby upon the earth. Even seated he looms, like a mountain on the hillside. Quiet as one too, when it suits him, and for a little while there's nothing but the fires and the night air.

"So..." The words feel awkward on his tongue. "So, Ark."

"Yeah?"

"Where are _we_ going? I mean besides 'all the fucking way away from that giant fucking mess we just made'?" In a way it's a question much bigger than _how do I live through the end of tomorrow?_ He's had a century to get the hang of that one, no sweat. Get your coin, stab the other guy before he stabs you (cause he fucking _will,_ brother), and sleep with your dagger in your hand so you can wake up the next day to do it again. Go through the motions, from one decade to the next. No, this question is definitely bigger than that. Life's become a matter of greater purpose now, and regardless of their younger years that's something the orcs have far more experience with than he does. Arkaïl more than any of them.

"We go to the Hotlands. The Red Breath that came out of the Mire will see their tribe-land again too before they die...and so will I."

Styx doesn't know where his own tribe-lands are, but that's not really worth mentioning. They wouldn't mean anything to him now anyway, and somehow _that's_ the thought that stands out. Maybe the ghost wasn't just talking about his body when he called the two of them a deformed orc. A withered, purposeless, landless thing. You couldn't come up with a creature less orcish than that, not if you tried. He belongs here and he doesn't, all right, and maybe if he'd just told the damn ghost to fuck off and be gone he wouldn't have this old baggage lingering in his skull. He'd just be Styx the goblin and only that, nobody else. That other guy would just be dead. And Styx the goblin wouldn't care.

( _Stop denying it!_ )

"And others who were scattered before will return there now, as the word spreads. It's the surest way to find everyone again."

"Oh yeah. Yeah, shit. I still can't imagine you with a kid. Closest I get is basically just your ugly mug, but shorter. Beard and everything. Two of you in the world, only it's more like one and a half. I've been giving myself nightmares, here." Once his mouth starts running it just goes and goes, always has. But talking about Arkaïl's family is a hell of a lot less messy than thinking about his own, that's for sure, just like talking to Arkaïl is easier, for now, than facing the mass of general orcishness down by the fires.

"Hmph. My son may only be eleven, but he's been taller than a _rakash_ like you since he was half that age."

He belongs here and he doesn't, but maybe the only part of that that matters is that he does belong here. Fuck, he is _definitely_ not telling anyone how sentimental he's gotten in his old age.

"Wonderful. I can't wait."

_Come with me,_ the ghost of himself had said. _Come fill the emptiness in your soul._


End file.
